Important Quotations Explained
1. Yes,
the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It
was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless
hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward,
softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling,
too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where
Michael Furey lay buried.
—“The Dead”
2. He
looked down the slope and, at the base, in the shadow of the wall
of the Park, he saw some human figures lying. Those venal and furtive
loves filled him with despair. He gnawed the rectitude of his life;
he felt that he had been outcast from life's feast.
—“A Painful Case”
3. I
watched my master's face pass from amiability to sternness; he hoped
I was not beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts
together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life
which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me
child's play, ugly monotonous child's play.
—“Araby”
4.
He remembered the books of poetry upon his shelves at home. He
had bought them in his bachelor days and many an evening, as he
sat in the little room of the hall, he had been tempted to take
one down from the bookshelf and read out something to his wife.
But shyness always held him back; and so the books had remained
on their shelves.
—“A Little Cloud”
5.
They thought they had only a girl to deal with and that, therefore,
they could ride roughshod over her. But she would show them their
mistake. They wouldn't have dared to have treated her like that
if she had been a man. But she would see that her daughter got her
rights: she wouldn't be fooled.
—“A Mother”
